ter color of the thing."

Hecklemeir did not ask how Lady Muriel came by the thing she claimed;
his profession always avoided such detail. But he knew that she had gone
to Bramwell Winton; and what she had must have come from some scientific
source. The mention of Hector Bartlett was not without its virtue.

Lady Muriel marked the man's changed manner, and pushed her trade.

"I want a check for a hundred pounds and a third of the thing when you
bring it out."

Hecklemeir stood for a moment with the tips of his fingers pressed
against his lips; then replied.

"If you have anything like the thing you describe, I'll give you a
hundred pounds... let me see it."

She took the water color out of the bosom of her jacket and gave it to
him.

He carried it over to the window and studied it a moment. Then he turned
with a sneering oath.

"The devil take your treasure," he said, "these things are
water-elephants. I don't care a farthing if they stand on the bottom of
every lake in Africa!"

And he flung the water color toward her. Mechanically the stunned woman
picked it up and smoothed it out in her fingers.

With the key to the picture she saw it clearly, the shadowy bodies of
the beasts and the tips of their trunks distended on the surface like
a purple flower. And vaguely, as though it were a memory from a
distant life, she recalled hearing the French Ambassador and Baron Rudd
discussing the report of an explorer who pretended to have seen these
supposed fabulous elephants come out of an African forest and go down
under the waters of Lake Leopold.

She stood there a moment, breaking the thing into pieces with her bare
hands. Then she went out. At the door on the landing she very nearly
stepped against a little cockney.

"My Lidy," he whined, "I was bringing your gloves; you dropped them on
your way up."

She took them mechanically and began to draw them on... the cryptic
sign of the cleaner on the wrist hem was now to her indicatory of
her submerged estate. The little cockney hung about a moment as for a
gratuity delayed, then he disappeared down the stair before her.

She went slowly down, fitting the gloves to her fingers.

Midway of the flight she paused. The voice of the little cockney, but
without the accent, speaking to a Bobby standing beside the entrance
reached her.

"It was Sir Henry Marquis who set the Yard to register all laundry marks
in London. Great C. I. D. Chief, Sir Henry!"

And Lady Mu